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reserved by the Prophetic Spirit that indited them . . . to quell some foreseen heresy, . . . or resolve some yet unformed doubts, or confound some error that hath not yet a name.
Bishop Butler, in his “Analogy” (1737) says:--
Nor is it at all incredible that a Book which has been so long in the possession of mankind, should yet contain many truths as yet undiscovered.
For all the same phenomena and the same faculties of investigation from which such great discoveries in natural knowledge have been made in the present and last age, were equally in the possession of mankind several thousand years before.
And possibly it might be intended that events, as they come to pass, should open and ascertain the meaning of several parts of Scripture.
The
Interpreter (1862) says:--
A day is coming when Scripture, long darkened by traditional teaching, too frequently treated as an exhaustive mine, will at length be recognized in its true character, as a field rich in unexplored wealth, and consequently be searched afresh for its hidden treasures.
Vinet, in his “Lectures,” says--
Even now, after eighteen centuries of Christianity, we may be involved in some tremendous error of which the Christianity of the future will make us ashamed.
Dean Stanley says:--
Each age of the Church has, as it were, turned over a new leaf in the Bible, and found a response to its own wants.
We have a leaf still to turn,--a leaf not the less new because it is so simple.
Dr. Crosby passes to the great weapon of the Temperance movement,--the pledge.
This he calls “unmanly,”
